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(writings on a subject)

  • 1 Digest (Collection of passages from the writings of Roman jurists, arranged in 50 books and subdivided into titles according to the subject matter)

    Религия: "Дигесты"

    Универсальный англо-русский словарь > Digest (Collection of passages from the writings of Roman jurists, arranged in 50 books and subdivided into titles according to the subject matter)

  • 2 literature

    noun
    1) Literatur, die
    2) (writings on a subject) [Fach]literatur, die (on zu)
    3) (coll.): (printed matter) Literatur, die; Informationsmaterial, das
    * * *
    ['litrə ə]
    (poems, novels, plays etc in verse or prose, especially if of fine quality.) die Literatur
    * * *
    lit·era·ture
    [ˈlɪtrətʃəʳ, AM -t̬ɚətʃɚ]
    I. n no pl
    1. (written works) Literatur f
    American/English \literature amerikanische/englische Literatur
    nineteenth-century \literature die Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts
    a work of \literature ein literarisches Werk
    2. (specialist texts) Fachliteratur f (on/about über + akk)
    scientific \literature naturwissenschaftliche Fachliteratur
    3. (printed matter) Informationsmaterial nt
    have you got any \literature about these washing machines? haben Sie irgendwelche Unterlagen zu diesen Waschmaschinen? f
    II. n modifier (course, student) Literatur-
    * * *
    ['lItərItSə(r)]
    n
    Literatur f; (inf = brochures etc) Informationsmaterial nt; (= specialist literature) (Fach)literatur f
    * * *
    literature [ˈlıtərətʃə; ˈlıtrıtʃə; US ˈlıtərəˌtʃʊər] s
    1. Literatur f, Schrifttum n:
    English literature (die) englische Literatur;
    the literature of medicine die medizinische (Fach)Literatur;
    literature circle literarischer Zirkel, Literaturzirkel m
    2. umg Informationsmaterial n
    3. Schriftstellerei f
    lit. abk
    1. literal (literally)
    * * *
    noun
    1) Literatur, die
    2) (writings on a subject) [Fach]literatur, die (on zu)
    3) (coll.): (printed matter) Literatur, die; Informationsmaterial, das
    * * *
    n.
    Dichtung -en f.
    Literatur f.

    English-german dictionary > literature

  • 3 Cobbett, William

    [br]
    b. 9 March 1762 Farnham, Surrey, England
    d. 17 June 1835 Guildford, Surrey, England
    [br]
    English political writer and activist; writer on rural affairs, with a particular concern for the conditions of the agricultural worker; a keen experimental farmer who claimed responsibility for the import of Indian maize to Britain.
    [br]
    The son of a smallholder farmer and self-taught surveyor, William Cobbett was brought up to farm work from an early age. In 1783 he took employment as an attorney's clerk in London, but not finding this to his liking he travelled to Chatham with the intention of joining the Navy. A mistake in "taking the King's shilling" found him in an infantry regiment. After a year's training he was sent out to Nova Scotia and quickly gained the rank of sergeant major. On leaving the Army he brought corruption charges against three officers in his regiment, but did not press with the prosecution. England was not to his taste, and he returned to North America with his wife.
    In America Cobbett taught English to the growing French community displaced by the French Revolution. He found American criticism of Britain ill-balanced and in 1796 began to publish a daily newspaper under the title Porcupine's Gazetteer, in which he wrote editorials in defence of Britain. His writings won him little support from the Americans. However, on returning to London in 1800 he was offered, but turned down, the management of a Government newspaper. Instead he began to produce a daily paper called the Porcupine, which was superseded in 1802 by Cobbett's Political Register, this publication continued on a weekly basis until after his death. In 1803 he also began the Parliamentary Debates, which later merged into Hansard, the official report of parliamentary proceedings.
    In 1805 Cobbett took a house and 300-acre (120-hectare) farm in Hampshire, from which he continued to write, but at the same time followed the pursuits he most enjoyed. In 1809 his criticism of the punishment given to mutineers in the militia at Ely resulted in his own imprisonment. On his release in 1812 he decided that the only way to remain an independent publisher was to move back to the USA. He bought a farm at Hampstead, Long Island, New York, and published A Year's Residence in America, which contains, amongst other things, an interesting account of a farmer's year.
    Returning to Britain in the easier political climate of the 1820s, Cobbett bought a small seed farm in Kensington, then outside London. From there he made a number of journeys around the country, publishing accounts of them in his famous Rural Rides. His experiments and advice on the sowing and cultivation of crops, particularly turnips and swedes, and on forestry, were an important mechanism for the spread of ideas within the UK. He also claimed that he was the first to introduce the acacia and Indian maize to Britain. Much of his writing expresses a concern for the rural poor and he was firmly convinced that only parliamentary reform would achieve the changes needed. His political work and writing led to his election as Member of Parlaiment for Oldham in the 1835 election, which followed the Reform Act of 1832. However, by this time his energy was failing rapidly and he died peacefully at Normandy Farm, near Guildford, at the age of 73.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    Cobbett's Observations on Priestley's Emigration, published in 1794, was the first of his pro-British tracts written in America. On the basis of his stay in that country he wrote A Year's Residence in America. His books on agricultural practice included Woodlands (1825) and Treatise on Cobbett's Corn (1828). Dealing with more social problems he wrote an English Grammar for the use of Apprentices, Plough Boys, Soldiers and Sailors in 1818, and Cottage Economy in 1821.
    Further Reading
    Albert Pell, 1902, article in Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 63:1–26 (describes the life and writings of William Cobbett).
    James Sambrook, 1973, William Cobbett, London: Routledge (a more detailed study).
    AP

    Biographical history of technology > Cobbett, William

  • 4 Babbage, Charles

    [br]
    b. 26 December 1791 Walworth, Surrey, England
    d. 18 October 1871 London, England
    [br]
    English mathematician who invented the forerunner of the modern computer.
    [br]
    Charles Babbage was the son of a banker, Benjamin Babbage, and was a sickly child who had a rather haphazard education at private schools near Exeter and later at Enfield. Even as a child, he was inordinately fond of algebra, which he taught himself. He was conversant with several advanced mathematical texts, so by the time he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1811, he was ahead of his tutors. In his third year he moved to Peterhouse, whence he graduated in 1814, taking his MA in 1817. He first contributed to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1815, and was elected a fellow of that body in 1816. He was one of the founders of the Astronomical Society in 1820 and served in high office in it.
    While he was still at Cambridge, in 1812, he had the first idea of calculating numerical tables by machinery. This was his first difference engine, which worked on the principle of repeatedly adding a common difference. He built a small model of an engine working on this principle between 1820 and 1822, and in July of the latter year he read an enthusiastically received note about it to the Astronomical Society. The following year he was awarded the Society's first gold medal. He submitted details of his invention to Sir Humphry Davy, President of the Royal Society; the Society reported favourably and the Government became interested, and following a meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Babbage was awarded a grant of £1,500. Work proceeded and was carried on for four years under the direction of Joseph Clement.
    In 1827 Babbage went abroad for a year on medical advice. There he studied foreign workshops and factories, and in 1832 he published his observations in On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. While abroad, he received the news that he had been appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. He held the Chair until 1839, although he neither resided in College nor gave any lectures. For this he was paid between £80 and £90 a year! Differences arose between Babbage and Clement. Manufacture was moved from Clement's works in Lambeth, London, to new, fireproof buildings specially erected by the Government near Babbage's house in Dorset Square, London. Clement made a large claim for compensation and, when it was refused, withdrew his workers as well as all the special tools he had made up for the job. No work was possible for the next fifteen months, during which Babbage conceived the idea of his "analytical engine". He approached the Government with this, but it was not until eight years later, in 1842, that he received the reply that the expense was considered too great for further backing and that the Government was abandoning the project. This was in spite of the demonstration and perfectly satisfactory operation of a small section of the analytical engine at the International Exhibition of 1862. It is said that the demands made on manufacture in the production of his engines had an appreciable influence in improving the standard of machine tools, whilst similar benefits accrued from his development of a system of notation for the movements of machine elements. His opposition to street organ-grinders was a notable eccentricity; he estimated that a quarter of his mental effort was wasted by the effect of noise on his concentration.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1816. Astronomical Society Gold Medal 1823.
    Bibliography
    Babbage wrote eighty works, including: 1864, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.
    July 1822, Letter to Sir Humphry Davy, PRS, on the Application of Machinery to the purpose of calculating and printing Mathematical Tables.
    Further Reading
    1961, Charles Babbage and His Calculating Engines: Selected Writings by Charles Babbage and Others, eds Philip and Emily Morrison, New York: Dover Publications.
    IMcN

    Biographical history of technology > Babbage, Charles

  • 5 Bi Sheng (Pi Sheng)

    SUBJECT AREA: Paper and printing
    [br]
    b. c.990 China
    d. c.1051 China
    [br]
    Chinese inventor of movable type for printing.
    [br]
    Bi Sheng was a commoner, "a man of unofficial position". The only record of his invention is Shen Gua's writings, the Meng Qi Bi Tan (c.1088), which give a clear and complete description of the making of type, typesetting, printing and distribution of the type after printing. Each character was cut in a piece of clay and then baked hard. The type was placed in an iron frame or forme set on an iron plate coated with a sticky resin, wax and paper ash. Printing a few copies was laborious, but for 100 or 1,000 copies the process was relatively quick. Each character had several types, and the commoner ones had as many as twenty or more. No further information about the type has survived, nor has any book produced in this way. Bi Sheng died soon after his invention was made, and so he was probably unable to pass the details on to an apprentice or follower.
    [br]
    Further Reading
    Joseph Needham, 1985, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. V(1) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vols V(1), pp. 201–3; V(3), p. 187.
    LRD

    Biographical history of technology > Bi Sheng (Pi Sheng)

  • 6 Blith, Walter

    [br]
    b. Seventeenth century Warwickshire, England
    d. Seventeenth century England
    [br]
    [br]
    Blith was the son of a cereal and dairy farmer from the Forest of Arden. He wrote a treatise on farming which was of contemporary value in its description of drainage and water meadows, both subjects of particular relevance in the mid-seventeenth century. The book, The English Improver, contains illustrations of agricultural equipment which have become an almost obligatory inclusion in any book on agricultural history. His understanding of the plough is apparent from the text and illustrations, and his was an important step in the understanding of the scientific principles to be applied to its later design. The introduction to the book is addressed to both Houses of Parliament, and is very much an attempt to highlight and seek solutions to the problems of the agriculture of the day. In it he advocates the passing of legislation to improve agricultural practice, whether this be for the destruction of moles or for the compulsory planting of trees to replace those felled.
    Blith himself became a captain in the Roundhead Army during the English Civil War, and even added a dedication to Cromwell in the introduction to his second book, The English Improver Improved, published in 1652. This book contains additional information on both practice and crops, an expansion in knowledge which presumably owes something to Blith's employment as a surveyor of Crown lands between 1649 and 1650. He himself bought and farmed such land in Northamptonshire. His advice on the choice of land for particular crops and the implements of best use for that land expressed ideas in advance of their times, and it was to be almost a century before his writings were taken up and developed.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1649, The English Improver; or, A New Survey of Husbandry Discovering to the Kingdom That Some Land, Both Arable and Pasture May be Advance Double or Treble, and Some five or Tenfold.
    1652, The English Improver Improved.
    Further Reading
    J.Thirsk (ed.), 1985, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. II (deals with Blith and the agriculture of his time).
    AP

    Biographical history of technology > Blith, Walter

  • 7 Briggs, Henry

    [br]
    b. February 1561 Warley Wood, Yorkshire, England
    d. 26 January 1630 Oxford, England
    [br]
    English mathematician who invented common, or Briggsian, logarithms and whose writings led to their general acceptance throughout Europe.
    [br]
    After education at Warley Grammar School, Briggs entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1577 and became a fellow in 1588. Having been Reader of the Linacre Lecture in 1592, he was appointed to the new Chair in Geometry at Gresham House (subsequently Gresham College), London, in 1596. Shortly after, he concluded that the logarithms developed by John Napier would be much more useful if they were calculated to the decimal base 10, rather than to the base e (the "natural" number 2.71828…), a suggestion with which Napier concurred. Until the advent of modern computing these decimal logarithms were invaluable for the accurate calculations involved in surveying, navigation and astronomy. In 1619 he accepted the Savilian Chair in Geometry at Oxford University, having two years previously published the base 10 logarithms of 1,000 numbers. The year 1624 saw the completion of his monumental Arithmetica Logarithmica, which contained fourteen-figure logarithms of 30,000 numbers, together with their trigonometric sines to fifteen decimal places and their tangents and secants to ten places!
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1617, Logarithmorum Chilias Primi (the first published reference to base 10 logarithms). 1622, A Treatise of the North West Passage to the South Sea: Through the Continent of
    Virginia and by Fretum Hudson.
    1633, Arithmetica Logarithmica, Gouda, the Netherlands; pub. in 1633 as Trigonmetria Britannica, London.
    Further Reading
    E.T.Bell, 1937, Men of Mathematics, London: Victor Gollancz. See also Burgi, Jost.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Briggs, Henry

  • 8 Cartwright, Revd Edmund

    [br]
    b. 24 April 1743 Marnham, Nottingham, England
    d. 30 October 1823 Hastings, Sussex, England
    [br]
    English inventor of the power loom, a combing machine and machines for making ropes, bread and bricks as well as agricultural improvements.
    [br]
    Edmund Cartwright, the fourth son of William Cartwright, was educated at Wakefield Grammar School, and went to University College, Oxford, at the age of 14. By special act of convocation in 1764, he was elected Fellow of Magdalen College. He married Alice Whitaker in 1772 and soon after was given the ecclesiastical living of Brampton in Derbyshire. In 1779 he was presented with the living of Goadby, Marwood, Leicestershire, where he wrote poems, reviewed new works, and began agricultural experiments. A visit to Matlock in the summer of 1784 introduced him to the inventions of Richard Arkwright and he asked why weaving could not be mechanized in a similar manner to spinning. This began a remarkable career of inventions.
    Cartwright returned home and built a loom which required two strong men to operate it. This was the first attempt in England to develop a power loom. It had a vertical warp, the reed fell with the weight of at least half a hundredweight and, to quote Gartwright's own words, "the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to throw a Congreive [sic] rocket" (Strickland 19.71:8—for background to the "rocket" comparison, see Congreve, Sir William). Nevertheless, it had the same three basics of weaving that still remain today in modern power looms: shedding or dividing the warp; picking or projecting the shuttle with the weft; and beating that pick of weft into place with a reed. This loom he proudly patented in 1785, and then he went to look at hand looms and was surprised to see how simply they operated. Further improvements to his own loom, covered by two more patents in 1786 and 1787, produced a machine with the more conventional horizontal layout that showed promise; however, the Manchester merchants whom he visited were not interested. He patented more improvements in 1788 as a result of the experience gained in 1786 through establishing a factory at Doncaster with power looms worked by a bull that were the ancestors of modern ones. Twenty-four looms driven by steam-power were installed in Manchester in 1791, but the mill was burned down and no one repeated the experiment. The Doncaster mill was sold in 1793, Cartwright having lost £30,000, However, in 1809 Parliament voted him £10,000 because his looms were then coming into general use.
    In 1789 he began working on a wool-combing machine which he patented in 1790, with further improvements in 1792. This seems to have been the earliest instance of mechanized combing. It used a circular revolving comb from which the long fibres or "top" were. carried off into a can, and a smaller cylinder-comb for teasing out short fibres or "noils", which were taken off by hand. Its output equalled that of twenty hand combers, but it was only relatively successful. It was employed in various Leicestershire and Yorkshire mills, but infringements were frequent and costly to resist. The patent was prolonged for fourteen years after 1801, but even then Cartwright did not make any profit. His 1792 patent also included a machine to make ropes with the outstanding and basic invention of the "cordelier" which he communicated to his friends, including Robert Fulton, but again it brought little financial benefit. As a result of these problems and the lack of remuneration for his inventions, Cartwright moved to London in 1796 and for a time lived in a house built with geometrical bricks of his own design.
    Other inventions followed fast, including a tread-wheel for cranes, metallic packing for pistons in steam-engines, and bread-making and brick-making machines, to mention but a few. He had already returned to agricultural improvements and he put forward suggestions in 1793 for a reaping machine. In 1801 he received a prize from the Board of Agriculture for an essay on husbandry, which was followed in 1803 by a silver medal for the invention of a three-furrow plough and in 1805 by a gold medal for his essay on manures. From 1801 to 1807 he ran an experimental farm on the Duke of Bedford's estates at Woburn.
    From 1786 until his death he was a prebendary of Lincoln. In about 1810 he bought a small farm at Hollanden near Sevenoaks, Kent, where he continued his inventions, both agricultural and general. Inventing to the last, he died at Hastings and was buried in Battle church.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Board of Agriculture Prize 1801 (for an essay on agriculture). Society of Arts, Silver Medal 1803 (for his three-furrow plough); Gold Medal 1805 (for an essay on agricultural improvements).
    Bibliography
    1785. British patent no. 1,270 (power loom).
    1786. British patent no. 1,565 (improved power loom). 1787. British patent no. 1,616 (improved power loom).
    1788. British patent no. 1,676 (improved power loom). 1790, British patent no. 1,747 (wool-combing machine).
    1790, British patent no. 1,787 (wool-combing machine).
    1792, British patent no. 1,876 (improved wool-combing machine and rope-making machine with cordelier).
    Further Reading
    M.Strickland, 1843, A Memoir of the Life, Writings and Mechanical Inventions of Edmund Cartwright, D.D., F.R.S., London (remains the fullest biography of Cartwright).
    Dictionary of National Biography (a good summary of Cartwright's life). For discussions of Cartwright's weaving inventions, see: A.Barlow, 1878, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power, London; R.L. Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester. F.Nasmith, 1925–6, "Fathers of machine cotton manufacture", Transactions of the
    Newcomen Society 6.
    H.W.Dickinson, 1942–3, "A condensed history of rope-making", Transactions of the Newcomen Society 23.
    W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London (covers both his power loom and his wool -combing machine).
    RLH

    Biographical history of technology > Cartwright, Revd Edmund

  • 9 Clarke, Arthur Charles

    [br]
    b. 16 December 1917 Minehead, Somerset, England
    [br]
    English writer of science fiction who correctly predicted the use of geo-stationary earth satellites for worldwide communications.
    [br]
    Whilst still at Huish's Grammar School, Taunton, Clarke became interested in both space science and science fiction. Unable to afford a scientific education at the time (he later obtained a BSc at King's College, London), he pursued both interests in his spare time while working in the Government Exchequer and Audit Department between 1936 and 1941. He was a founder member of the British Interplanetary Society, subsequently serving as its Chairman in 1946–7 and 1950–3. From 1941 to 1945 he served in the Royal Air Force, becoming a technical officer in the first GCA (Ground Controlled Approach) radar unit. There he began to produce the first of many science-fiction stories. In 1949–50 he was an assistant editor of Science Abstracts at the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
    As a result of his two interests, he realized during the Second World War that an artificial earth satellite in an equatorial orbital with a radius of 35,000 km (22,000 miles) would appear to be stationary, and that three such geo-stationary, or synchronous, satellites could be used for worldwide broadcast or communications. He described these ideas in a paper published in Wireless World in 1945. Initially there was little response, but within a few years the idea was taken up by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration and in 1965 the first synchronous satellite, Early Bird, was launched into orbit.
    In the 1950s he moved to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to pursue an interest in underwater exploration, but he continued to write science fiction, being known in particular for his contribution to the making of the classic Stanley Kubrick science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on his book of the same title.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Clarke received many honours for both his scientific and science-fiction writings. For his satellite communication ideas his awards include the Franklin Institute Gold Medal 1963 and Honorary Fellowship of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 1976. For his science-fiction writing he received the UNESCO Kalinga Prize (1961) and many others. In 1979 he became Chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka and in 1980 Vikran Scrabhai Professor at the Physical Research Laboratory of the University of Ahmedabad.
    Bibliography
    1945. "Extra-terrestrial relays: can rocket stations give world wide coverage?", Wireless World L1: 305 (puts forward his ideas for geo-stationary communication satellites).
    1946. "Astronomical radar: some future possibilities", Wireless World 52:321.
    1948, "Electronics and space flight", Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 7:49. Other publications, mainly science-fiction novels, include: 1955, Earthlight, 1956, The
    Coast of Coral; 1958, Voice Across the Sea; 1961, Fall of Moondust; 1965, Voices
    from the Sky, 1977, The View from Serendip; 1979, Fountain of Paradise; 1984, Ascent to Orbit: A Scientific Autobiography, and 1984, 2010: Odyssey Two (a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey that was also made into a film).
    Further Reading
    1986, Encyclopaedia Britannica.
    1991, Who's Who, London: A. \& C.Black.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Clarke, Arthur Charles

  • 10 Columella, Lucius Iunius Moderatus

    [br]
    b. first century AD Gades (now Cádiz), Spain
    d. first century AD Tarentum (now Taranto), Italy
    [br]
    Spanish writer on agricultural practice during the Roman era.
    [br]
    Columella was a native of Gades, a Roman municipium in southern Spain. The only knowledge of him is through his writings, in which he makes reference to his uncle, but not to his parents. His uncle was an expert farmer of the region, and it would appear that Columella spent much of his youth with him. As an adult he moved near to Rome, and spent the rest of his life in that region, owning at least three farms in Latium, and a fourth probably near the Etruscan town of Caere. There is evidence that he visited Syria in Cilicia, where it is possible that he was doing military service. His fame lies in the twelve books of the Res Rustica, which provide the most detailed extant discussion of Roman agricultural practice, and a single volume on trees. Each volume of Res Rustica was addressed and sent to Publius Silvinius as it was completed. The single volume De Arboribus, dealing with trees, vines and olives, was addressed to Epruis Marcellus. Columella was quoted by Seneca (4 BC-65 AD) and Pliny the elder (23–79 AD).
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1941, Res Rustica, Vols I–IV, trans. H.Boyd; Vols V–XII, trans. E.S.Forster and E.H.Heffner, Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library series (Vol. I has a biog. introd. with full bibliographical details).
    AP

    Biographical history of technology > Columella, Lucius Iunius Moderatus

  • 11 Dunne, John William

    SUBJECT AREA: Aerospace
    [br]
    b. 2 December 1875 Co. Kildare, Ireland
    d. 24 August 1949 Oxfordshire, England
    [br]
    Irish inventor who pioneered tailless aircraft designed to be inherently stable.
    [br]
    After serving in the British Army during the Boer War. Dunne returned home convinced that aeroplanes would be more suitable than balloons for reconnaissance work. He built models to test his ideas for a tailless design based on the winged seed of a Javanese climbing plant. In 1906 Dunne joined the staff of the Balloon Factory at Farnborough, where the Superintendent, Colonel J.E.Capper, was also interested in manned kites and aeroplanes. Since 1904 the colourful American "Colonel" S.F. Cody had been experimenting at Farnborough with manned kites, and in 1908 his "British Army Dirigible No. 1" made the first powered flight in Britain. Dunne's first swept-wing tailless glider was ready to fly in the spring of 1907, but it was deemed to be a military secret and flying it at Farnborough would be too public. Dunne, Colonel Capper and a team of army engineers took the glider to a remote site at Blair Atholl in Scotland for its test flights. It was not a great success, although it attracted snoopers, with the result that it was camouflaged. Powered versions made short hops in 1908, but then the War Office withdrew its support. Dunne and his associates set up a syndicate to continue the development of a new tailless aeroplane, the D 5; this was built by Short Brothers (see Short, Hugh Oswald) and flew successfully in 1910. It had combined elevators and ailerons on the wing tips (or elevons as they are now called when fitted to modern delta-winged aircraft). In 1913 an improved version of the D 5 was demonstrated in France, where the pilot left his cockpit and walked along the wing in flight. Dunne had proved his point and designed a stable aircraft, but his health was suffering and he retired. During the First World War, however, it was soon learned that military aircraft needed to be manoeuvrable rather than stable.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1913, "The theory of the Dunne aeroplane", Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (April).
    After he left aviation, Dunne became well known for his writings on the nature of the universe and the interpretation of dreams. His best known-work was An Experiment
    With Time (1927; and reprints).
    Further Reading
    P.B.Walker, 1971, Early Aviation at Farnborough, Vol. I, London; 1974, Vol. II (provides a detailed account of Dunne's early work; Vol. II is the more relevant).
    P.Lewis, 1962, British Air craft 1809–1914, London (for details of Dunne's aircraft).
    JDS

    Biographical history of technology > Dunne, John William

  • 12 Floyer, Sir John

    SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology
    [br]
    b. 3 March 1649 Hints, Warwickshire, England
    d. 1734 Lichfield, Staffordshire, England
    [br]
    English physician, pioneer in the measurement of pulse and respiration rate.
    [br]
    The younger son of a landed Midlands family, Floyer embarked on medical studies at Oxford at the age of 15 and graduated in 1674. He returned to Lichfield where he resided and practised, as well as being acquainted with the family of Samuel Johnson, for the remainder of a long life. Described by a later biographer as "fantastic, whimsical, pretentious, research-minded and nebulous", he none the less, as his various medical writings testify, became a pioneer in several fields of medical endeavour. It seems likely that he was well aware of the teachings of Sanctorius in relation to measurement in medicine and he probably had a copy of Sanctorius's weighing-machine made and put to use in Lichfield.
    He also embarked on extensive studies relating to pulse, respiration rate, temperature, barometric readings and even latitude. Initially he used the minute hand of a pendulum clock or a navigational minute glass. He then commissioned from Samuel Watson, a London watch-and clockmaker, a physicians' pulse watch incorporating a second-hand and a stop mechanism. In 1707 and 1710 he published a massive work, dedicated to Queen Anne, that emphasized the value of the accurate measurement of pulse rates in health and disease.
    His other interests included studies of blood pressure, asthma, and the medical value of cold bathing. It is of interest that it was at his suggestion that the young Samuel Johnson was taken to London to receive the Royal Touch, from Queen Anne, for scrofula.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    Knighted 1686.
    Bibliography
    1707–10, The Physicians Pulse Watch, 2 vols, London.
    Further Reading
    D.D.Gibb, 1969, 'Sir John Floyer, M.D. (1649–1734), British Medical Journal.
    MG

    Biographical history of technology > Floyer, Sir John

  • 13 Hales, Stephen

    [br]
    b. September 1677 Bekesbourne, Kent, England
    d. 4 January 1761 Teddington, Middlesex, England
    [br]
    English physiologist and inventor, author of the first account of the measurement of blood pressure.
    [br]
    After attending Corpus Christi, Cambridge, he was admitted as a Fellow in 1702. During the ensuing years he was engaged in botanical, astronomical and chemical activities and research. He was appointed Minister at Teddington, Middlesex, in 1708 and remained in that post until his death. During these years, he continued to engage in a wide range of botanical and physiological activities involving studies of the nutrition of plants, blood pressure and the flow of blood in animals. He was also the inventor of improved ventilation by systems of partition and ducting, and the production of fresh water by distillation for ships at sea. The wide range of his interests did not preclude his care for his pastoral duties, and he was involved in the education of the Prince of Wales's children, although he declined a canonry of Windsor. In his writings he set a standard for the scientific method as related to principles based on facts and observation.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1718. Copley Medal 1739. Académie Française 1753. Founding Member, Society of Arts; Vice-President 1755.
    Bibliography
    1727, Vegetable Statisticks, London. 1733, Statistical Essays, London.
    1743, 1758, A Description of Ventilators, London.
    MG

    Biographical history of technology > Hales, Stephen

  • 14 Heaviside, Oliver

    [br]
    b. 18 May 1850 London, England
    d. 2 February 1925 Torquay, Devon, England
    [br]
    English physicist who correctly predicted the existence of the ionosphere and its ability to reflect radio waves.
    [br]
    Brought up in poor, almost Dickensian, circumstances, at the age of 13 years Heaviside, a nephew by marriage of Sir Charles Wheatstone, went to Camden House Grammar School. There he won a medal for science, but he was forced to leave because his parents could not afford the fees. After a year of private study, he began his working life in Newcastle in 1870 as a telegraph operator for an Anglo-Dutch cable company, but he had to give up after only four years because of increasing deafness. He therefore proceeded to spend his time studying theoretical aspects of electrical transmission and communication, and moved to Devon with his parents in 1889. Because the operation of many electrical circuits involves transient phenomena, he found it necessary to develop what he called operational calculus (which was essentially a form of the Laplace transform calculus) in order to determine the response to sudden voltage and current changes. In 1893 he suggested that the distortion that occurred on long-distance telephone lines could be reduced by adding loading coils at regular intervals, thus creating a matched-transmission line. Between 1893 and 1912 he produced a series of writings on electromagnetic theory, in one of which, anticipating a conclusion of Einstein's special theory of relativity, he put forward the idea that the mass of an electric charge increases with its velocity. When it was found that despite the curvature of the earth it was possible to communicate over very great distances using radio signals in the so-called "short" wavebands, Heaviside suggested the presence of a conducting layer in the ionosphere that reflected the waves back to earth. Since a similar suggestion had been made almost at the same time by Arthur Kennelly of Harvard, this layer became known as the Kennelly-Heaviside layer.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1891. Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1924. Honorary PhD Gottingen. Honorary Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
    Bibliography
    1872. "A method for comparing electro-motive forces", English Mechanic (July).
    1873. Philosophical Magazine (February) (a paper on the use of the Wheatstone Bridge). 1889, Electromagnetic Waves.
    Further Reading
    I.Catt (ed.), 1987, Oliver Heaviside, The Man, St Albans: CAM Publishing.
    P.J.Nahin, 1988, Oliver Heaviside, Sage in Solitude: The Life and Works of an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York.
    J.B.Hunt, The Maxwellians, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Heaviside, Oliver

  • 15 Henry, Joseph

    [br]
    b. 17 December 1797 Albany, New York, USA
    d. 13 May 1878 Washington, DC, USA
    [br]
    American scientist after whom the unit of inductance is named.
    [br]
    Sent to stay with relatives at the age of 6 because of the illness of his father, when the latter died in 1811 Henry was apprenticed to a silversmith and then turned to the stage. Whilst he was ill himself, a book on science fired his interest and he began studying at Albany Academy, working as a tutor to finance his studies. Initially intending to pursue medicine, he then spent some time as a surveyor before becoming Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Albany Academy in 1826. There he became interested in the improvement of electromagnets and discovered that the use of an increased number of turns of wire round the core greatly increased their power; by 1831 he was able to supply to Yale a magnet capable of lifting almost a ton weight. During this time he also discovered the principles of magnetic induction and self-inductance. In the same year he made, but did not patent, a cable telegraph system capable of working over a distance of 1 mile (1.6 km). It was at this time, too, that he found that adiabatic expansion of gases led to their sudden cooling, thus paving the way for the development of refrigerators. For this he was recommended for, but never received, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. Five years later he became Professor of Natural Philosophy at New Jersey College (later Princeton University), where he deduced the laws governing the operation of transformers and observed that changes in magnetic flux induced electric currents in conductors. Later he also observed that spark discharges caused electrical effects at a distance. He therefore came close to the discovery of radio waves. In 1836 he was granted a year's leave of absence and travelled to Europe, where he was able to meet Michael Faraday. It was with his help that in 1844 Samuel Morse set up the first patented electric telegraph, but, sadly, the latter seems to have reaped all the credit and financial rewards. In 1846 he became the first secretary of the Washington Smithsonian Institute and did much to develop government support for scientific research. As a result of his efforts some 500 telegraph stations across the country were equipped with meteorological equipment to supply weather information by telegraph to a central location, a facility that eventually became the US National Weather Bureau. From 1852 he was a member of the Lighthouse Board, contributing to improvements in lighting and sound warning systems and becoming its chairman in 1871. During the Civil War he was a technical advisor to President Lincoln. He was a founder of the National Academy of Science and served as its President for eleven years.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    President, American Association for the Advancement of Science 1849. President, National Academy of Science 1893–1904. In 1893, to honour his work on induction, the International Congress of Electricians adopted the henry as the unit of inductance.
    Bibliography
    1824. "On the chemical and mechanical effects of steam". 1825. "The production of cold by the rarefaction of air".
    1832, "On the production of currents \& sparks of electricity \& magnetism", American
    Journal of Science 22:403.
    "Theory of the so-called imponderables", Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 6:84.
    Further Reading
    Smithsonian Institution, 1886, Joseph Henry, Scientific Writings, Washington DC.
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Henry, Joseph

  • 16 Herbert, Sir Alfred Edward

    [br]
    b. 5 September 1866 Leicester, England
    d. 26 May 1957 Kings Somborne, Hampshire, England
    [br]
    English mechanical engineer and machine-tool manufacturer.
    [br]
    Alfred Herbert was educated at Stoneygate School, Leicester, and served an apprenticeship with Joseph Jessop \& Sons, also of Leicester, from 1881 to 1886. In 1887 he was engaged as Manager of a small engineering firm in Coventry, and before the end of that year he purchased the business in partnership with William Hubbard. They commenced the manufacture of machine-tools especially for the cycle industry. Hubbard withdrew from the partnership in 1890 and Herbert continued on his own account, the firm being established as a limited liability company, Alfred Herbert Ltd, in 1894. A steady expansion of the business continued, especially after the introduction of their capstan lathe, and by 1914 it was the largest manufacturer of machine-tools in Britain. In addition to making machine-tools of all types for the home and export market, the firm acted as an agent for the import of specialist machine-tools from abroad. During the First World War Alfred Herbert was in 1915 appointed head of machine-tool production at the War Office and when the Ministry of Munitions was set up he was transferred to that Ministry as Controller of Machine Tools. He was President of the Machine Tools Trades Association from 1919 to 1934. He was elected a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1892 and in 1921 was a founder member of the Institution of Production Engineers. Almost to the end of his long life he continued to take an active part in the direction of his company. He expressed his views on current events affecting industry in the technical press and in his firm's house journal.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    KBE 1917. Officier de la Légion d'honneur 1917. Order of St Stanislas of Russia 1918. Order of Leopold of Belgium 1918. Freeman of the City of Coventry 1933. President, Institution of Production Engineers 1927–9. Honorary Member, Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1941.
    Bibliography
    1948, Shots at the Truth, Coventry (a selection of his speeches and writings).
    Further Reading
    D.J.Jeremy (ed.), 1984–6, Dictionary of Business Biography, Vol. 3, London, pp. 174–7 (a useful account).
    Obituary, 1957, Engineering, 183:680.
    RTS

    Biographical history of technology > Herbert, Sir Alfred Edward

  • 17 Jackson, John Hughlings

    SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology
    [br]
    b. 4 April 1835 Providence Green, Yorkshire, England
    d. 7 October 1911 London, England
    [br]
    English neurologist and neurophysiologist, discoverer of Jacksonian epilepsy and the neurological basis of speech defects; pioneer of the technique of the localization of the site of cerebral disease.
    [br]
    Jackson studied medicine at York and at St Bartholomew's Hospital, qualifying in 1856. For a while he practised in York and was dissuaded from abandoning medicine for philosophy by Jonathan Hutchinson. Upon his return to London, he was appointed Assistant Physician and later, in 1874, Physician to the London Hospital. He was also on the staff of Moorfields Eye Hospital and in 1874 was appointed to the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic in Queen's Square. It was particularly in connection with his association with cases at the latter that he was able to establish the association of designated areas of the brain with specific limbs and functions. He acknowledged that in the field of speech the work of Broca had shown the way.
    [br]
    Principal Honours and Distinctions
    FRS 1878. Gulstonian Lecturer and Croonian Lecturer, College of Physicians.
    Bibliography
    1869, Certain Points on the Study and Classification of Diseases of the Nervous System.
    1884, Evolution and Dissolution of the Nervous System.
    1931–32, Selected Writings (ed. J.Taylor et al.).
    MG

    Biographical history of technology > Jackson, John Hughlings

  • 18 Marshall, William

    [br]
    b. baptized 28 July 1745 Yorkshire, England
    d. 1818 Pickering, Yorkshire, England
    [br]
    English commentator and writer on agriculture who established the first agricultural college in Britain.
    [br]
    Little is known for certain about William Marshall's early life, other than that he was baptized at Sinnington in the West Riding of Yorkshire. On his own account he was involved in trade in the West Indies from the age of 15 for a period of fourteen years. It is assumed that he was financially successful in this, for on his return to England in 1774 he was able to purchase Addisham Farm in Surrey. Having sacked his bailiff he determined to keep a minute book relating to all transactions on the farm, which he was now managing for himself. On these entries he made additional comments. The publication of these writings was the beginning of a substantial review of agriculture in Britain and a criticism of existing practices. From 1779 he acted as agent on a Norfolk estate, and his five years in that position resulted in The Rural Economy of Norfolk, the first of a series of county reviews that he was to write, intending the somewhat ambitious task of surveying the whole country. By 1808 Marshall had accumulated sufficient capital to be able to purchase a substantial property in the Vale of Cleveland, where he lived for the rest of his life. At the time of his death he was engaged in the erection of a building to serve as an agricultural college; the same building is now a rural-life museum.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    Scotland in 1794, and Planting and Rural Ornament in 1796. He also wrote On the Enclosure of Commonable and Intermixed Lands in 1801, On the Landed Property of England, an Elementary Practical Treatise in 1804, and On the Management of Landed Estates in 1806. He was not asked to write any of the County Surveys produced by the Board of Agriculture, despite his own claims to the origin of the idea. Instead in 1817 he wrote A Review and Complete Abstract of the Reports of the Board of Agriculture as his own criticism of them.
    Further Reading
    Joan Thirsk, 1989, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. VI (deals with the years 1750 to 1850, the period associated with Marshall).
    Pamela Horn, 1982, William Marshall (1745–1818) and the Georgian Countryside, Beacon (gives a more specific account).
    AP

    Biographical history of technology > Marshall, William

  • 19 Napier (Neper), John

    [br]
    b. 1550 Merchiston Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland
    d. 4 April 1617 Merchiston Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland
    [br]
    Scottish mathematician and theological writer noted for his discovery of logarithms, a powerful aid to mathematical calculations.
    [br]
    Born into a family of Scottish landowners, at the early age of 13 years Napier went to the University of St Andrews in Fife, but he apparently left before taking his degree. An extreme Protestant, he was active in the struggles with the Roman Catholic Church and in 1594 he dedicated to James VI of Scotland his Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St John, an attempt to promote the Protestant case in the guise of a learned study. About this time, as well as being involved in the development of military equipment, he devoted much of his time to finding methods of simplifying the tedious calculations involved in astronomy. Eventually he realized that by representing numbers in terms of the power to which a "base" number needed to be raised to produce them, it was possible to perform multiplication and division and to find roots, by the simpler processes of addition, substraction and integer division, respectively.
    A description of the principle of his "logarithms" (from the Gk. logos, reckoning, and arithmos, number), how he arrived at the idea and how they could be used was published in 1614 under the title Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio. Two years after his death his Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Constructio appeared, in which he explained how to calculate the logarithms of numbers and gave tables of them to eight significant figures, a novel feature being the use of the decimal point to distinguish the integral and fractional parts of the logarithm. As originally conceived, Napier's tables of logarithms were calculated using the natural number e(=2.71828…) as the base, not directly, but in effect according to the formula: Naperian logx= 107(log e 107-log e x) so that the original Naperian logarithm of a number decreased as the number increased. However, prior to his death he had readily acceded to a suggestion by Henry Briggs that it would greatly facilitate their use if logarithms were simply defined as the value to which the decimal base 10 needed to be raised to realize the number in question. He was almost certainly also aware of the work of Joost Burgi.
    No doubt as an extension of his ideas of logarithms, Napier also devised a means of manually performing multiplication and division by means of a system of rods known as Napier's Bones, a forerunner of the modern slide-rule, which evolved as a result of successive developments by Edmund Gunther, William Oughtred and others. Other contributions to mathematics by Napier include important simplifying discoveries in spherical trigonometry. However, his discovery of logarithms was undoubtedly his greatest achievement.
    [br]
    Bibliography
    Napier's "Descriptio" and his "Constructio" were published in English translation as Description of the Marvelous Canon of Logarithms (1857) and W.R.MacDonald's Construction of the Marvelous Canon of Logarithms (1889), which also catalogues all his works. His Rabdologiae, seu Numerationis per Virgulas Libri Duo (1617) was published in English as Divining Rods, or Two Books of Numbering by Means of Rods (1667).
    Further Reading
    D.Stewart and W.Minto, 1787, An Account of the Life Writings and Inventions of John Napier of Merchiston (an early account of Napier's work).
    C.G.Knott (ed.), 1915, Napier Tercentenary Memorial Volume (the fullest account of Napier's work).
    KF

    Biographical history of technology > Napier (Neper), John

  • 20 Paré, Ambroise

    SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology
    [br]
    b. 1510 Laval, Maine, France
    d. 20 December 1590 Paris, France
    [br]
    French physician, surgeon and anatomist recognized as the founder of the rational approach to the practice of surgery and the treatment of wounds.
    [br]
    After a barber-surgeon apprenticeship in Paris, Paré was appointed Resident Surgeon to the Hôtel-Dieu in 1533. From 1537 he served as a military surgeon in the Wars of Religion under Henri II, François II, Charles IX and Henri III. His immense experience of battlefield surgery led him to initiate new treatments of wounds and amputations, replacing the destructive and infecting procedures then practised. His first book, published in 1549, advocated the use of simple ointments and ligatures for amputations.
    During the following years he experienced many adventures and vicissitudes and survived the St Bartholomew's Day massacre probably as a result of royal intervention. His numerous surgical and anatomical discoveries and innovations appeared in two major sets of works published in 1564 and 1572. In 1574 he was appointed premier chirurgien, conseiller et valet-de-chambre to Henri II, and a further collection of writings was published in 1575.
    His attempts to unite French surgeons under his leadership were consistently opposed by the Faculty of Physicians, who not only objected to his writing in French rather than Latin, but also to his refutation of such therapies as "mummies and unicorn's horn".
    Of his many contributions to medicine, his insistence on rational treatments is outstanding, and two aphorisms are representative: "Then I resolved never again to so cruelly burn the poor wounded by gunshot"; "I removed the stone but God cured the patient".
    [br]
    Bibliography
    1575, Les Oeuvres de M.Ambroise Paré, Paris.
    Further Reading
    MG

    Biographical history of technology > Paré, Ambroise

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